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Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 20, 2010 15:10:44 GMT
I wandered ‘round the graveyard Searching for a ghoul I carried lantern, spade and jemmy Feeling quite the fool Folks nearby were frightened Quivered, shook and wept The phantom put the wind up all Who previously had slept. Descriptions varied wildly No two accounts the same But an ancient dastard highwayman Took the lion’s share of blame Yellow light fell upon marble angels Spade snagged weed and stone A snickering sound made my heart jump Moonlight revealed the crone “You seek Rancid Richard” A statement not a query I nodded in agreement Tired and awful weary. “He lies yonder” leered the witch And gestured into the dark I swallowed fear, hefted spade This no longer seemed a lark The beldame faded quickly Sweat cooled upon my brow My lantern flickered ominously I was sore afeart now I stumbled all of a sudden My boot had trod ‘pon air The shuddering light showed yawning grave. My hat raised ‘pon my hair. “Seek ye Richard?” came the growl I swore and turned about A brace of flintlock pistols sneered Below a snarling snout. I saw two yellow hate-filled eyes That would not disgrace a cat Lank black hair did tumble from ‘Neath a tricorn hat. “Be you Richard?” came my whine “Be you the rancid one?” “That I be” smirked the road agent “And your life, you worm, is done” I threw the light, and swung the spade But Richard’s form was smoke Ghostly pistols can’t kill me? This was a macabre joke His flintlocks roared ; I felt the pain My flesh was rent apart I fell forward, hands outstretched The open grave did claim my heart I tasted earth, and turned my head The night sky framed in rectangle The spectral murd’rous highwayman Set all my nerves a-jangle The crone stepped up beside him Cackled she again “Another fool falls victim, And another victim slain” As soil spattered ‘gainst my cheekbones And I coughed up blood so thick I rued the day I listened to tales Of the ghastly Rancid Dick.
END
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Post by Calenture on Jul 20, 2010 19:19:44 GMT
A story and a poem and they're both fun. Someone had three Shredded Wheat this morning.
I thought it was great! ;D
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 21, 2010 7:25:40 GMT
Thanks, Rog!
NB The story is an old one, part of an experiment on another board. A lovely lady had the idea of putting up a picture, and, if we were so inclined, us scribblers would throw up a story based on the pic. I've another that turned into a delirious comic strip, which I'll start putting up later. It's rather long.
NB There's the sequel to Dreadstone as well.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Aug 15, 2013 12:04:42 GMT
To celebrate the possibly forthcoming publication of the above pome in a Gothic Poetry magazine, F Marsh Esq (Poet & Tragedian 1745 - 1813 - almost half an hour!) resents -
The Road Agent
The wood was old. The trees, though still living and growing, had a burnt, black, dead appearance. Moss covered rocks abounded, and brown bracken carpeted the forest floor. The coach track that ran through was rutted, hardened and the encroaching flora had narrowed a once broad passageway. It was here that Richard ‘Rancid Dick’ Croker, highwayman and thief had practiced his evil trade and met his deserved end. Or had he?
Francis Dashfoote and Spike Johnson surveyed the dark terrain.
“ ‘Twas here, Sir?” muttered Johnson, attempting to put some bravado into his unusually hushed tones.
“Aye, Spike” replied the former Bow Street Runner. “ ‘Twas here that dastard robbed and pillaged…and died.”
Johnson thought hard, and peered into the forbidding territory.
“So it’s an impostor, then, Sir?”
“That’s my guess. Not a phantom. Not a spirit. A cunning, vapid soul who seeks to terrify the poor and take the rich for what they have. He’ll provide good sport, Spike. We’ll have him and hang him. Hang him from one of those obsidian trees that shelter him”
Dashfoote’s confident speech almost assuaged Johnson’s fears. But it was past noon, and he could hear no birdsong.
‘*********************************
The roar of carousing from the public bar of The Matching Flintlocks was tempered by the entrance of Dashfoote and Johnson into the saloon. The smell lingered. Johnson felt uneasy in the gentrified part of the Inn, but relieved to have his eyesight freed from the malignant spectacle of the forest.
The landlord, fully six foot seven of bald-pated bad temper, stooped to enter the tarnished respectability of the dust laden saloon bar and sneered “What’ll it be…. Gents?”
Dashfoote smiled superciliously.
“Don’t remember me, Dan?”
Dan Rowantree squinted, then bared brown teeth in a mockery of a smile.
“Well, if it ain’t Master Dashfoote, with his fancy frills and pigsticker and bangstick. Come to finish the job properly this time, milord?”
The sarcasm hung in the foul air for a second, before being swept away, by Rowantree’s obsequious bow.
“I did it properly last time as you well know, Dan.” The landlord’s jeering had pricked Dashfoote’s ego, and it showed.
“You were there.”
“That I was, yer worship. Saw you gun ‘im down, fair and square. And legal like.”
The raucous laughter and catcalls from the public bar had ceased, and the silence hung as heavily as the rotten odours.
“Saw the Reverend Barncombe bury ‘im, too. Arter you’d gorn.”
The landlord picked up a tankard and pretended to polish it, ruining the mime show with a hefty gob of sputum, which, in itself, contained a hefty proportion of phlegm. The brown teeth reappeared.
“But none o’ that seems to have stopped ol’ Dick!”
The public bar erupted in a maelstrom of hoots and cackles.
“That’s why I’m back,” glowered Dashfoote. “But I don’t believe it’s ‘ol’ Dick’ that’s responsible for this latest spate of blackguardry. If anything, it’s a new Dick pretending to be ol’ Dick, but Mr Johnson and I will soon settle the matter. If it’s free, I’ll take my old room, Dan, the one at the front, with the magnificent view of the wood. Well, it would be if you could get Nell to clean the windows.”
Rowantree paused in making the tankard more filthy than it had been.
“Good luck, Mr Johnson, “ he smirked. “Hope the young master has told you about his previous helper. ‘E was buried same time as Dick.”
Snuffling laughter.
“I’ll put you in the room next to ‘is Lordship. And I’ll send Farky up if’n you like. She’s good for more than cleanin’ winders.”
The landlord’s fan club cheered and whistled. A faded blonde floozy appeared from the throng, staggeringly slightly. She attempted a wanton pose but the loud belch precluded any erotic effect.
“Thank you, Dan, “ laughed Dashfoote, “but that won’t be necessary. There’s dirty work afoot. The new Dick takes after his predecessor by preferring nocturnal pursuits. We’ll be joining him.”
The two visitors ascended the stairs, and inspected their temporary living quarters. Johnson rubbed at the squalid glass. Spotting the wood, he wished he hadn’t. The sun was slipping below the horizon, turning the sky crimson, and cloaking the forest with an impenetrable darkness.
‘************************************** Dashfoote led the way into the cemetery. Johnson wondered why they had to do this after sundown. An owl hoot startled him into grasping his sword handle. Could blades and bullets be effective against….? Putting spectres out of his mind, he gritted his teeth and followed his dandy employer. The muttering, spluttering ancient Reverend took the lead twixt leaning headstones and gnarled bent trees, his flickering lantern providing a faint yellow glimpse of overgrown graves which seemed to struggle to contain their contents. Appropriately dead flowers adorned many of these resting places. The vicar’s mumbling and tottering stopped simultaneously. The amber glow shuddered as his shaking arm struggled to raise the lantern. Dashfoote frowned and Johnson bit his lip. The grave was open, as though its occupant had burst free, unwilling to rest in peace.
The Reverend Barncombe leaned unsteadily forward, then gasped in shock.
“There’s a body!”
“I see it,” mused Dashfoote. “I seem to recall the original Dick having the luxury of a pauper’s coffin. This fellow, whoever he may be, has not even that comfort.”
Bolstered by his employer’s calm, Spike jumped into the earthern pit. He could see the two exit wounds in the corpse’s back. His boot turned the body over. The yellow light steadied as Dashfoote removed it from the Reverend’s care, and held it over the grave.
“Whoever he is, he’s not Dick,” said Francis, in a self-satisfied tone, as he helped Johnson clamber from the earth.
“Human, right enough, and shot twice,” confirmed Johnson. “You all right , Vicar?”
Both men turned to Barncombe, who’s shaking had reached all over teeth-rattling proportions.
“Look!” croaked the holy man, pointing across the graveyard.
The investigative pair swivelled back and concentrated in the direction of the vicar’s wildly trembling index finger.
An ancient crone was barely visible in the faint moonlight, beyond the lantern’s illumination.
“’Tis May!” groaned Barncombe, voice quavering. “ The mother of Rancid Richard. ‘Tis said her appearance precedes that of…of…”
With a groan and a sigh, the Reverend lost consciousness, folding gracefully to the ground, then rolling less gracefully into the former resting place of the unsettled highwayman, and on top of the mystery corpse.
Dashfoote and Johnson had been dividing their attention between the approaching beldame and the falling vicar. The crone’s harsh cackle pulled their eyes away from the grave.
“Murderer! You killed my boy!” bellowed the ancient female, waving her walking stick in Dashfoote’s direction.
“Balderdash, Madam,” the fop spat back. “Your son was the murderer…”
“Some say he still is,” she crowed. “That fool under’eath the parson come lookin’, hopin’ to capture a ghost…and look at ‘im. Bloodied and bowed I’d say. “
Dashfoote ground his teeth.
“Them flintlock balls as done that feller weren’t spectral, Ma’am,” muttered Johnson. “Them’s were real.”
“My son’s dead!” wailed the crone. “Dead at the ‘ands o’ that stuck-up bastard. So ‘e killed a few – so what? Only them’s as wouldn’t part with their riches. Riches the likes a’ we ain’t never seen. And wouldn’t. And they’d let us starve. ‘E killed so as we could live. An’ ‘E ain’t finished yet, Sir Tumblefoote.”
Dashfoote jumped as an owl hooted, the same bird that had earlier unnerved Johnson. As he formed a reply, his words lodged in his throat as he noticed an eerie, ectoplasmic green glow emanate from the far side of the cemetery.
“Zounds!” cursed the effete yet violent law enforcer.
“’Tis Dick!” screeched the elderly graveyard lurker. “My boy!”
Spike Johnson stepped forward, and pointed his flintlock at the unearthly shimmering luminescence. Within the shifting miasma, a humanesque shape could be distinguished. Johnson’s hand began to shake as he made out a battered tricorn hat, long greasy locks, cat-like yellow eyes, a kerchief masking the rest of the face. Two matching spectral pistols seemed to float before the phantom figure.
“Shoot, Spike, damyer!” croaked Dashfoote, edging behind the staunch manservant.
Johnson winced as his pistol discharged. The ball passed straight through the ghastly glimmer, knocking woodchips from a distant yew.
“Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em dead!” screamed May, her triumphant quadrille foreshortened by a step too near the yawning grave. With a whoop she joined the Reverend and the corpse.
Dashfoote flung himself sideways as the ghostly guns roared, belching smoke and flame. Alas, poor Spike! The retainer disintegrated and fell, spraying precious lifeblood into the grave of the advancing spectre.
“It cannot be!” whispered an awed Dashfoote, unconsciously drawing his sword. “It’s foul trickery.”
He thrust forward, blade passing through air.
The figure laughed, raising the hairs ‘pon Francis’ neck. It pulled down the non-corporeal kerchief and leered at the shivering aristo.
“Yes, Dashfoote. ‘Tis I, the Rancid one. The one you murdered, caring not a cuss for the strugglin’ poor. You, who’ve never wanted fer a thing in your miserable life, yet so fear and hate those without, you feel the need to wipe ‘em out under the cover of your law. Yours not ours!”
“Tell ‘im, Dick!” May’s hoarse cry came from the bowels of the earth.
The road agent turned to answer his maternal parent, who was attempting to climb from her son’s grave. Dashfoote seized his chance. He wrenched a silver crucifix from around his neck, and looped it around his sword. Muttering the Lord’s prayer under his breath, he lashed out at the shimmering mirage before him. Miraculously (some might say) the highwayman’s noggin, complete with hat, separated from the body and flew upwards. Dashfoote punched the air, and with lightning speed slash the air afore him, reducing the miscreants body to eddys of smoke, which slunk across the graveyard. The phantom head dropped into the grave, causing shrieks and scream from May.
Unsportingly, Dashfoote grasped his late assistant’s arm and dragged him to grave’s edge ; a judicious booted kick depositing the hapless Johnson atop May, who’s caterwauling abruptly ceased. Francis hand-shovelled earth into the grave, sweating and praying. When full, he sat back, wiping perspiration from his fevered brow.
Birdsong and pale yellow sunlight woke him. The graveyard sat quietly, shunning him. He limped back to the Inn, saddled his horse and rode back toward London, shivering and muttering.
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